San Diego Central Library: A new chapter

Q: People have free reign within a library. What is to stop people, whether they are homeless or not, from getting up on the top floors where the school is?

GRIFFITH: Safety and security is a concern at every school site. The architect actually designed a private entrance for the school that is not open to public access. And that is really at every school site where that should happen. We have our own private entrance, our own separate address actually. Our elevators are separate as well as our staircase. The staircase that is in the library actually goes through our floor. You can see us but you can’t touch.

BARROW: Everything about this product is unprecedented. When you look at the partnership with the library and the school, when you look at the funding, how this project actually was able to come to fruition. I think we are probably the perfect answer to what people have been always asking for which is that we work together, that we have the public/private, and that we take advantage of whatever assets are available in the public sector. So working with the Unified School District, the Charter School, our private donations, unprecedented in my mind in terms of building a public library. It is an amazing project. And a lot of wonderful people have contributed so much to it. We anticipate that this is going to be quite a model for San Diego and for other cities.